Cod wisdom and sentimentality abound in John Irving’s throwback to 1980s-style magical realism

John Irving’s great influences are Charles Dickens and Günter Grass, and
throughout his long and fertile career he has been a standard-bearer for
ebullient, inventive storytelling, full of prodigies, coincidences, bizarre
accidents, outrageous sex scenes, charismatic animals and episodes of
weeping. There is certainly a case to be made for Irving’s kind of fiction,
as the many fans of his best-known books, such as A Prayer for Owen Meany
(1989) and The World According to Garp (1978), can attest. There are also a
number of pitfalls; his dreadful 14th novel is a case in point.

Avenue of Mysteries, a throwback to 1980s-style magical realism, recalls a
time when British and American writers were in thrall to Grass’s The Tin
Drum and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. The hero is
Juan Diego Guerrero, a writer who in many ways resembles Irving. He has